Money is one of the most important things in the world. It sustains you and enables you to have control over your time and your energy. It allows you to buy whatever you want and go wherever you want.
It empowers you and makes you feel confident and in control.
While my parents taught me the value of saving money, I knew little about the actual asset classes they chose to invest in. I knew they invested in bank fixed deposits, the public provident fund and gold jewelry. In those days, interest rates were good.
My parents didn’t know much about the stock market and after losing a small sum of money they did not venture into it for a long, long time. That fear stuck with me.
Even credit cards and credit scores were an American concept back in the 90s.
In India, credit cards meant your financial health sucked. If you took a loan, it meant you did not have enough money to take care of your family’s needs.
So, my family and I avoided loans and credit cards and debt of any kind. This is the mindset I grew up with — spend the money you have, buy only what you can afford. Don’t buy more than you need at any given point. All of this is generally good advice, and it shaped my relationship with money over the years.
But when my dad passed away, things changed for us.
The onus of taking care of our finances suddenly fell on my mom. While she had been involved with managing the household budget, it was mostly my dad who took care of the other investments.
Now, there no one else to “take care” of everything.
My mom and I had to take care of ourselves and our future. That’s pretty overwhelming and scary for a 17-year-old who has just lost a parent, a friend, a guide, and a financial cushion.
We picked ourselves up and focused on what we needed to do. My mom took the reins and started diving deeper into the world of personal finance.
Even though my engineering program didn’t allow me to be as involved in the day-to-day of our investments, my mom would diligently explain every single investment she made on my behalf. When she opened her trading account, she started explaining the nitty gritty of the stock markets to me. I absorbed all that I could. She used to spend a few hours every day watching Zee Business (an Indian TV channel), reading the Economic Times Wealth (one of the leading Tier 1 media in India), and summarizing it for me.
My relationship with money started changing as I found myself being sucked into the world of investments, stocks, mutual funds, SIPs, gold bonds, and more. And yet, the more I got sucked into, the more I felt like running away. There was this inertia I couldn’t control. While she would motivate me to take an interest in personal finance, I never felt the inner drive to take charge. I had no idea why. It seemed like a dull and boring topic, a world I knew nothing about.
Returns. FD interest rates. Monthly installments. These words became part of our daily lexicon.
When I got my first salary, I gave it to my mom.
I jokingly call her my wealth manager. And in many ways, she has been one. Every month after my salary was credited, I would ask her where to invest and what we could do with it.
Over the years, as I kept doing this consistently, I started becoming more and more familiar with the jargon, the markets, and the asset classes.
Funnily enough, the more I tried to push the decision-making of investments onto my mother, the more I ended up working closely with the stock markets, the financial world, and business.
As an intern with a business publication in the U.S., I found myself reporting on the U.S. equity markets, startups, entrepreneurs, and businesses. Another internship took me closer to terms like options, futures, high yield investing, international investing and more. Back in India, I worked on branded content campaigns for leading insurers in the country, and yet again, I found myself writing about term plans, life insurance, and ULIPs. Today, I work for an independent advisory firm and words like valuation, M&A, and corporate finance are topics I come across every day.
Ironic, right?
Last year, I finally realized I needed to start being a more knowledgeable investor. And, in December 2020, I opened a trading account that I would manage on my own. I enrolled in a personal finance workshop, and it was indeed the best decision I ever made.
If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, it’s simple. We all have our own version of the “personal finance” fear that I grew up with. I’m still learning, I’m still trying to figure out my investment “mantra.” But the point is don’t let your fear or weakness rule your life. The more you run from your weakness or the thing you’re scared of, the more it will come closer to you.
In my case, it was something that worked out well in the end. All those jobs, internships, and writing gigs were the Universe’s way of reminding me what I needed to do. Every job made me go down the “investing” rabbit hole. I had to learn about the industry to write about it.
Now, I’ve finally realized that I should stop running from the word “finance.” Personal wealth management is an essential life skill that needs to be learned by all of us.
If you can put in the time and effort to research and know what you're getting into, you will empower yourself. External advisors are great, but you need to know where your money is going. Period.
It’s not easy facing your fears. It takes commitment and consistency — and determination. But I promise you will thank me later.
I hope that you enjoyed this post and are staying safe and healthy out there. Use the comments section below to share your thoughts. And don’t forget to subscribe. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Twitter, so you can share any thoughts or questions you may have about careers, personal growth, networking, travel and communities.
With Being Curious, I’m sharing my experiences and random musings on working abroad, career pivots, personal growth, the passion economy, networking, and more. It’s a way to keep myself accountable in sharing my tips with other people who are struggling or stuck and need that extra nudge. This is an interesting experiment for me, and I can’t wait to see where I go with this.
Cheers,
Kritika
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Reading this made me remember my own spat with personal finance. Still exists but I think "we" have Agreed to Disagree on certain things.
But yes you are absolutely right. I think we never really run away from managing personal finances. I think it's how we handle it, how we embrace and deal with them. we are always worrying about things like what should we spend on, where to save our money, when is the next paycheck coming, and I think the tone needs to now be: How can I double this money, where should I invest it for better returns, what are my best options for savings?